A nightmare that began with the purchase of a brand new home from Charles Church (part of the Persimmon Group, which includes Persimmon Homes, Westbury Partnership).
The experience Charles Church gave us has been one we regret every day, we wish we had never seen the house, let alone bought it.
Years on, we're still unable to sell it - they avoid fixing it. Bouncy, Noisy & Unlevel Floors.

Thursday, 24 September 2009

Regional director for Persimmon Homes East Scotland, Ewan Mackay, said: "It is normal for a development of this scale to generate comments from the local community and we are more than happy to work with the council and local planners to address these issues."

“As a responsible house builder we are committed to working closely with the communities in which we operate to ensure all issues are addressed and we will continue to do so at our Easter Langlee development.”

But Charles Church (part of Persimmon) won't fix our home, from the leaky plumbing to the faulty flooring, after many years . . . maybe Persimmon and Charles Church directors should try being a customer complaining for a fix, and see if it's rose tinted marketing they want to hear.

Wednesday, 23 September 2009

It seems likely, more news to follow, on the Charles Church blunder that could cost £1000's to put right.

£50k is just one estimate, taking labour and material and estimating temporary accomodation at 3 months . . . but Charles Church is known to take years over these matters just to finally get to a fix that might work, and then might move you out for a year whilst they try to implement it.

Thursday, 17 September 2009

Forget cowboys, is a knight in shinning armour trying to persuade you to rush into a questionable fix for noisy & bouncy floors (not spelt noisey), including deflection, springyness, springiness, bouncing, vibration, flex, damaged floor joists, floors not fit for purpose, unlevel floors, green brick work, dropped brick.Don't take the short cut fix, make sure the Knight gives you a proper fix to the problem, not a minimum line of noggins across your joists. Read up on benefits of bridging using solid blocking rather than noggins (or herringbone cross bracing).

Friday, 11 September 2009

I would welcome the opportunity to see Anne Robinson questioning John White (Persimmon Group, Chairman) or Brian Thomson (Charles Church, Chairman) about the quality of the homes they build, and the standard of customer service they provide.

I'd welcome Anne Robinson giving them tough questioning as to the approach the Persimmon Companies have to customer service and dealing with customer complaints, snagging and construction issues.

On a lighter note, it could be a fun race, to see which home owner might get featured first - we could call it the Persimmon Cup, and place bets on who's featured first?

We made the mistake to purchase a Charles Church property over 3 years ago, and we are still awaiting the snagging to be finished, and for some major faults and leaks to even start being fixed or investigated. The builder appears to have bent over backwards to AVOID doing anything to properly redress the issues they caused with poor construction and a lack of quality control. Something which we appear not to be alone in reporting, whether one looks to houses built before or after ours. Even in 2009, the customers one talks to, across Charles Church and Persimmon Homes devlopments are still reporting problems of a similar nature.

Wednesday, 9 September 2009

If you want to avoid lowest specification floor joists in a new Charles Church Home (or Persimmon Homes), it could be better to look to other new builders using concrete floors at low prices, for example; Explore Living with its two beautiful new show homes and the sales and marketing suite at Guillemont Parc, Cove. Explore Living says, all the homes at Guillemont Parc benefit from solid concrete upper floors that reduce sound transmission and eliminate squeaky floorboards.

The article says - A Persimmon Homes spokesman said it was aware of various snagging issues - some how I wonder how many days before they might then claim they lost the snagging lists, and now have no record of any issues? This is a pattern Persimmon Group has repeated with us on a number of occasions.

The residents comments regarding the snagging, finish and standards of the estate are damming - but not untypical of those heard from other customers.

In talking to home owners we found for Persimmon Homes and Charles Church Noisy Floors (or noisey) also known as Squeaky Floors (or squeeky) and Floor Boards (or floorboards), were the most common complaint. It's also one of the most expensive to repair properly if the original fault is with the design and/or installation of the floor joists themselves, which can include problems with the joists fastenings, the brickwork they rest on, or the floor joists not being adequately protected from rain (weather elements) prior to being installed.

If buying a new home from Charles Church or Persimmon Homes, one should check or ask about the upstairs floor specification, specifically the Serviceability Index (SI). This is a measure of the joist performance (stiffness) relative to the minimum performance (12mm deflection). The minimum Floor Joist Serviceability Index is 1.0 for the UK, and with the higher specification builders this can be between SI 5 and 9 or even higher.

In homes we checked built by Persimmon Group plc, we generally found 245mm depth by 45mm width wooden composite semi-engineered joists across upto 4m span. Which when joists are spaced at 600mm as we found with Charles Church, the SI is 1.07. giving manufacturers joist deflection guide of over 10.73mm (over a cm). We could not find a lower specification they could have fitted, so beleive for this span, the SI of 1.07 is the lowest specification they could have used.

We understand the cost for all the floor joists (SI 1.07) were less than a thousand pounds for a 5 bedroom home, and that a significant increase in the SI could be acheived by spending only 40% more on those joists. The house type sold for around £600k. Yet on the marketing brochures, and company web site they talk of 'highest specification', which I don't see myself. To fix the problem now has been estimated at over £47k for a 'simple' fix (2-4 months work, ceilings down), and over £102k for a proper fix. Every home we checked, across every Charles Church or Persimmon Homes development has similar problems, providing you know how to spot the early signs.

For interest an SI of 6.19 gives a floor joist deflection of only 1.87mm in the above example (by using thicker joists closer together), a substantial reduction in floor joist deflection and resolving bouncy floor concerns for us.

Our Charles Church New Homes - A nightmare that began with the purchase of a brand new home from Charles Church (part of the Persimmon Group, which includes Persimmon Homes, Westbury Partnership).The experience Charles Church gave us has been one we regret every day, we wish we had never seen the house, let alone bought it.Several years on and we are still fighting for the home to be fixed and finished to a reasonable standard. We are not alone, the problems we have occur across estates, whether one looks in 2009, goes back 5 years or 10 years, same problems, same builder.We are unable to sell our home, unless we take a substantial loss (to compensate a new owner for the cost of fixing the structural and other issues).

The builder continues to avoid investigating the faults, acknowledging the faults, or fixing the faults. They have shown great endeavour in hiding the faults, laying blame elsewhere, intimidating the customer, playing games and wasting time, trying to push a substandard fix on the home owner.

Monday, 7 September 2009

Has M&S been used to try and get a little of the M&S quality brand to rub off on Persimmon Homes ?

Search on Google or Yahoo, for Persimmon Home Complaints. Also check out the snagging.org website forums, and look for Charles Church and Westbury Partnership, other brands within the Persimmon Group.

Customer complaints are across all three.

Also check news stories, with reputable news papers such as the Telegraph and Times - all have searchable archives on line.

The complaints we found go back 10 years, and appear not to have improved. If anything our own experience feels far worse than anything reported, as the reported stories seem to be watered down so as not to effect the resales too much or upset neighbours on those developments - but talk privately to customers of Persimmon or Charles Church and the complaints come to the surface very quickly.

Friday, 4 September 2009

Specifically from ones experience with Charles Church, and then following that up with visits to talk to other Charles Church and Persimmon Home owners, and to view the issue they have with their properties and the customer service.

Thursday, 3 September 2009

We are intending to have a complete list of other customer experiences with the Persimmon Group of companies in the UK New House Building Industry. We need the equivalent of the JD Power Survey.

But it has to be done in such a way that those customers that have invested in a new home from the Persimmon Homes Group, do not (either in perception or reality) devalue their investment.

To that end ones focus will be on Customer Satisfaction Surveys regarding Customer Service, and not focussing on the quality or structural issue (which have greatest impact on resale, if a Persimmon Estate gets a bad name)

Another example of customer complaints regarding Persimmon Homes, the UK new homes builder. One presumes this was another NHBC controlled site, but would be interested to hear if this is the case or not, comments welcome please?